Why didn't productivity shorten working hours?

[Mouthwash]

In 1929, John Maynard Keynes predicted that within a century people in the developed nations could maintain a high standard of living while working sixteen hours a week. And yes, productivity has risen massively- so why hasn't this happened? Why aren't we working 3 hours a day?

 

[Cutlass]

Main reason being that as people earned more money, they chose to buy more stuff. So our consumption rose with our productivity, instead of our leisure time. Houses average considerably larger now. And a very large part of Americans live in single family homes instead of apartments. And that's true in other developed nations as well. And these homes all have electricity and plumbing and automatic heating and air conditioning. Most American adults have cars. Our vacations are more expensive. We have consumer goods that our grandfathers and great grandfathers never even heard of. We have 20-30-50 sets of clothes rather than 2 or 3.

 

[Flying Pig]

Main reason being that as people earned more money, they chose to buy more stuff. So our consumption rose with our productivity, instead of our leisure time. Houses average considerably larger now. And a very large part of Americans live in single family homes instead of apartments. And that's true in other developed nations as well. And these homes all have electricity and plumbing and automatic heating and air conditioning. Most American adults have cars. Our vacations are more expensive. We have consumer goods that our grandfathers and great grandfathers never even heard of. We have 20-30-50 sets of clothes rather than 2 or 3.

I think there's also something about relative bargaining power. In a lot of jobs, people might quite like to work fewer hours for a less pay, if they had the decision. However, because those jobs usually have more people trying to get into them than places to fill, the employers are the ones with bargaining power, and they want their workers producing as much as possible. This doesn't quite work without Cutlass' answer being most of the explanation, but it's worth remembering that things are often less cozy than that.

 

[Zkribbler]

It cheaper for a plutocrat to work one person twelve hours per day than to work two people six hours per day each because the employer only has to pay one set of benefits, a premium for only one workers' comp. insurance, etc.

 

[Lexicus]

Main reason being that as people earned more money, they chose to buy more stuff. So our consumption rose with our productivity, instead of our leisure time.

Yep. Capitalists pulled the wool over our eyes, convincing us we needed all this stuff without the leisure to actually enjoy it.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Main reason being that as people earned more money, they chose to buy more stuff. So our consumption rose with our productivity, instead of our leisure time. Houses average considerably larger now. And a very large part of Americans live in single family homes instead of apartments. And that's true in other developed nations as well. And these homes all have electricity and plumbing and automatic heating and air conditioning. Most American adults have cars. Our vacations are more expensive. We have consumer goods that our grandfathers and great grandfathers never even heard of. We have 20-30-50 sets of clothes rather than 2 or 3.

All of this. As I travel to work in the morning, I walk along a road that is bumper-to-bumper traffic during the morning commute, and I can usually count on the fingers of one hand the cars that have more than one person inside.

I think it's an observed historical fact that as technology makes something less expensive, we don't consume the same quantity for less expense, we increase our consumption for the same expense. Artificial light was the example used in the article I read a while back: When a single candle cost a day's wages, we used very little artificial light, frequently just going to bed when it got dark. Today, an hour of artificial light costs the average worker something like a 1/3rd-second of labor, and we build so much artificial light that we have problems with "light pollution" now.


Also, here in the U.S., important things like health care are tied directly to adherence to the old-fashioned, Protestant ethic of full-time work defining our worth as human beings. If you work less than 40 hours a week, it's hard to get anything like education or child care, nevermind a vacation. Part-time workers are, literally in some cases, 2nd-class citizens (employers are often not required to provide benefits to part-time workers). The state I live in literally had to pass a law mandating that employers provide their workers with paid sick days, and I think there are a couple of states that passed laws just the other day prohibiting employers from changing their workers' schedules without notice.

 

[Samson]

I feel it is a combination of many things, many have been brought up here but also:

Accommodation costs. As population and wages have gone up, so have property prices. I could not afford to rent a flat for 1/3 of my salary, and many people spend more than 50% of their take home pay on rent. Buying is even harder for many people.

Competition and "looking keen". In many of the more highly paid careers there is a culture of being a "go-getter", of being willing to go the extra mile to make that X, of being the one that works hardest to get ahead. In this culture if you were to say "I am happy getting half the pay for half the hours" you are not going to be the one promoted, taken to that high level sales meeting or whatever. This disincentivizes the people who are in the position to take a pay cut from doing so.

 

[BvBPL]

We’re too busy working sixty hours a week to pay for the $800 smart phones that were made by slave labor to enjoy the productivity increases those smart phones give us.

 

[Mise]

I should note that, on an individual level, productivity increases typically do reduce working hours in desk jobs.

 

[metalhead]

Another factor is that wages haven't kept up with productivity. The minimum wage would be something like $22/hr if it kept up with productivity growth. The median hourly wage has grown a disgraceful 9.2% when adjusted for inflation since 1973, while per-worker productivity has increased 72% in that time. In the period post-WW2 until 1970, wage growth closely tracked productivity gains, while inflation remained low. One could very easily make the argument that increasing the minimum wage to $15 or even $20 an hour would help to have that effect - people's overall earnings might not increase, but their leisure time will increase dramatically.

People employing minimum wage workers complain they'd have to close, but that's stupid. They'd just have to cut hours. The only reason stores now are open from early morning to late at night, or 24/7, is because labor is so goddamned cheap. You go to Europe and stores and restaurants are closed most of the time. I think we can deal with stuff not being open 24 hours a day to pay people a decent wage.

 

[civvver]

Consumption and inflation were listed, but I think the biggest reason is social constructs. It's just assumed that you should work full time or parent full time. A lot of people's stance on early retirement is what else would I do with my time? People who don't work full time and instead do leisurely activities like gaming, reading, watching tv are seen as lazy and unproductive.

Plus we invent new stuff to work on, new industries like entertainment, computers etc. ~300 years ago how many people were able to abandon the farm and go to school and/or become engineers/inventors/artists/whatever? Not many cus it took a lot more work to do basic things like produce food, clothes, shelter. Now those things are relatively cheap as a sustinence level, so new industries arise like the internet. Look at how many people facebook and google employ and what actual productive things are they doing? Their business is data, it's not really tangible but it has monetary value obviously. We make up new things to work on.

 

[Synobun]

One thing people have not mentioned quite yet is comparative wages.

If you can make an industry so productive that you only need to spend a couple hours at a desk every couple days, great. There are still industries where this isn't the case and where the 40-60 hour work week is still a thing not because of culture but because that's how much work there is to do. Someone in this position may make, for example, $20/hr. What will someone in the productive industry make? Will they too make $20/hr? That just won't do. Are you going to adjust the wages of these reduced hour industries so that they make the same as those who work more hours? We already want to burn CEOs at the stake, doing something like that would only create an artificial class war.

 

[warpus]

They did, I work 37.5 hours a week. Sweden's trying out a 4 week work week, I think.

Mind you those who own companies don't want their employees working less, so of course there's pushback and progress is slow. But it happens.

 

[metalhead]

You could shorten the work week to ~24 hours or so, require all employees below a very high earnings floor to get paid time-and-a-half. So your employee making "minimum wage" nevertheless then makes $30/hr when work requirements cut into his leisure time. Perhaps even require double-time pay over ~48 hours. That way, being required to work more hours has a built-in benefit that employers cannot skirt. You'd find out awfully quickly how many employees are REALLY needed to spend that much time working every week.

Mind you those who own companies don't want their employees working less, so of course there's pushback and progress is slow. But it happens.

They only want them to work more when their additional labor is either absurdly cheap because of low hourly wages, or free because they are salaried. And most often, it's the latter - many employers of low wage employees do NOT want their employees topping 40 hours in a week if they have to pay them time-and-a-half.

 

[Lexicus]

We already want to burn CEOs at the stake, doing something like that would only create an artificial class war.

Yeah I mean if our society has any problems it's that CEOs just don't get the respect and adoration they deserve from the rest of us.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Long anecdote that does actually bear on the question:

Spoiler :

When I was a car salesman I was very good at it. I was top salesman of the month in almost half of the months that I worked, no matter what store I worked at. So it was a literal truth that I could walk into any store in town, or even in most nearby parts of the LA Metro area, and be hired on the spot...even if I had a somewhat...ahem...rocky...history with a particular store. So I go to work at the local Ford store, for the fifth time. Not long after I am in the weekly sales meeting (pump everyone up for the weekend, usually by lying to them about how either work conditions are going to improve from the seventy hour weeks or commissions are going to be a better split from the "you get 20% of the money that you make for me" range...all we need is ONE MORE BIG WEEKEND!!!!).

This dialog occurred:

Store owner: ~long blather about how visualization is critical to self motivation~ ...so you can't just want to make twenty thousand dollars this month. You need to know deep down in your bones, what that twenty thousand dollars is going to do for you. And none of you do. John, if you made twenty thousand dollars this month what would you do with it?
John: Ahhh....ummm...
Store owner: And that's exactly why you aren't going to make it. You'll make enough to get by, and probably come looking for a draw next month just to get by. Rick, what would YOU do if you made twenty thousand dollars this month?

Rick, having seen John get plowed under, knows he has to cough out an answer, and since we are on a car lot in his frantic casting around he strikes the obvious: I'd buy a car.
Store owner: That's a start, but you aren't going to be motivated by some generality. You need to be able to picture it to want it. Know what kind of car. Something that you really want. Something that will make your stomach twist every morning when you get in your old blower to drive to work. Some of you know Timmy here, and some of you are brand new in the business, but I didn't hire him to be just another salesman. He's a top gun everywhere he works, and I guarantee you that he know EXACTLY what he would do if he makes twenty thousand dollars this month, which he just might do [turns expectantly]
Tim: I'd take the next four months off.

Needless to say that was not the answer he was hoping for, though it was actually the absolute truth and also explained my success in the car business. I hated the car business, and all I wanted when I went to work was enough chips to not have to keep doing it. I got taken aside and hollered at for having screwed up his meeting when I of all people KNEW the kind of answer he wanted, and how he expected me to help motivate the rest of the crew by telling them how great it was to make big money selling cars.

Whether you read the anecdote or not, the bottom line is that the vast majority of people in developed countries have their work wrapped up in their identity, and they enforce it on each other. To be an exception is a position that can be very uncomfortable in myriad ways.

If you had a job where you could make what you consider a comfortable living working three days a week every new person you became acquainted with would have to be either pushed through their "ewwww, you work part time, let me treat you with the disdain I usually reserve for the help at Taco Bell" stage, or abandoned. And you would have to have pushed through it yourself, because it has been so thoroughly ground into every person growing up in America that no matter how much you might deny it, you do have it in you.

 

[Gigaz]

I think that the main reasons come down to competition.

Owning more stuff doesn't make people happy. Owning more stuff than the neighbor has, thats what everyone wants. Therefore, working hours are driven by competition.
There is some pressure to provide more wealth to the female than other men can. (Men work almost always at full-time jobs)
Some jobs, for example in advertisement, are fundamentally competetive. Imagine two companies which make the same product. The company which produces more ads will likely earn more money. But if they both produce the same amount of ads, it's as good as if they had no ads at all. So you can always stack jobs in advertisement which effectively cancel each other out.

 

[Gori the Grey]

And, as bad as the stats that metalhead quotes may be, the situation is actually about twice as bad as those statistics reflect, because most households are now working 80 hours/week.

In 1929, most households only had a single member in the labor force, and the other could provide her full attention to raising children.

It's all to the good that women can hold remunerative jobs now, of course, but the fact that in many households both adults must work to pay for those $800 cellphones (and their $200/month cellphone plans!) represents a further failure for capitalist systems to achieve for their citizens the level of leisure that Keyes imagined.

I don't think this is all bad, by the way. Most people are lousy at employing their leisure time.

 

[Synobun]

Yeah I mean if our society has any problems it's that CEOs just don't get the respect and adoration they deserve from the rest of us.

An astute interpretation of what I said.

 

[Lexicus]

An astute interpretation of what I said.

It seemed like you were implying that CEOs are unfairly maligned. If that's not what you were doing, I apologize and retract my snarky comment.